Matthew Perry recounted a painful dinner date with Cameron Diaz in his new memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. The Friends star said he and Diaz met soon after she split from Justin Timberlake in 2007. In his book, Perry, 53, claims Diaz, 50, got “immediately stoned” during their dinner party and “wasn’t interested in [him] at all.” Perry said that during a game of Pictionary, after saying “something witty” to the Shrek star, she “accidentally” struck him in the face while going for his shoulder. “Are you f— kidding me?” he recalls replying.
However, Perry doesn’t only write about this encounter in Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, as the Fools Rush In alum also discusses other aspects of his love life. He alleges that he kissed Valerie Bertinelli while Eddie Van Halen slept nearby in 1990 and explained why he split with Julia Roberts during that decade. “Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me,” Perry wrote in an excerpt published by the Times UK on Oct. 23. “Why would she not? I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unlovable,” he continued. “So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts.”
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Perry’s long struggle with addiction was a focus of the book, which includes an opioid addiction at the time, which he told the New York Times had cost him an estimated $9 million. Following two near-death experiences, he has been sober for 18 months. During a trailer for an interview with Diane Sawyer about his addiction issues, Perry revealed Jennifer Aniston confronted him about his struggles with alcohol on the set of Friends, telling him, “We know you’re drinking. “Imagine how scary a moment that was,” he said. “She was the one that reached out the most. I’m really grateful to her for that,” Perry added.
In the trailer for the Oct. 28 interview, he also admits to once taking “55 Vicodin a day” along with Methadone, Xanax, and a full 750ml bottle of vodka. According to Perry, there was a point in his past when he was “in a coma and escaped death really narrowly. “It is very odd to live in a world where if you died, it would shock people but surprise no one,” The Odd Couple actor said in the memoir. “There is a reason I’m still here,” Perry adds. “Figuring out why is the task that has been put in front of me.” Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing will be available on Nov. 1.
